Psycho-Educational Assessments

Our learning disabilities assessments will determine your child’s unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses both cognitively and academically. Our assessments will also evaluate for and look to rule out other possible difficulties that may be contributing to your child’s academic struggles, such as attention, or memory problems. Our professionals will write a detailed report of the findings, which will include a diagnosis and specific recommendations for interventions based on your child’s unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Our assessment report will also provide suggestions on the appropriate educational environment to best meet the needs of your child. In many cases, our assessments can help your child gain access to accommodations and interventions, including special education and 504 services. Gaining access to such services and accommodations can be essential to meeting your child’s academic needs and safeguarding self-esteem.

Our ADD/ADHD assessments will reveal a broad understanding of your child’s individual strengths and weaknesses in the areas of cognitive processing to include Verbal Reasoning, Nonverbal Reasoning, Working Memory and Processing Speed, as well as provide an accurate diagnosis (which is crucial for effective intervention), and identify or rule out other problems that can co-occur with ADD/ADHD or that have symptoms that appear like ADD/ADHD, such as depression, anxiety, and other learning disabilities. Our ADD/ADHD assessments also examine impulse control and inhibitory functions, as well as attention functioning under controlled conditions. Once the assessment is completed, our professional will write a detailed report of the findings that includes a host of specific recommendations to address any and all challenges your child may be experiencing. Children and adolescents who have been issued a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD are typically eligible for educational services and accommodations through special education or Section 504 that can help your child to become better organized, to improve their academic performance and work efficiency, to enhance their social relationships and to attain a greater sense of happiness. Our professional will discuss the results with you in person and answer any questions you may have.

Our personality and psychological assessments can provide clarity into understanding your child’s personality features and current emotional and behavioral struggles. Our assessment reports will provide practical suggestions for resolving challenging symptoms, for utilizing and building on your child’s strengths, for tapping into your child’s resiliencies, for accessing various resources, and for devising new strategies for managing individual difficulties. Our psychological assessments can also be useful in helping determine whether your child has an emotional disability that warrants crucial services such as special education, 504 and accommodations, such as extended time on tests.

Our comprehensive accommodations assessments can identify your child’s unique strengths and weaknesses, provide an accurate diagnosis to understand what is underlying your child’s academic struggles (i.e., ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, other learning disabilities, depression, anxiety), and offer individualized recommendations for your child to succeed educationally and personally. Our detailed accommodations assessment report can help your child gain access to certain educational services and accommodations (i.e., extended time on standardized tests- SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT; testing over multiple days; enlarged font on test materials, use of a computer for writing test) at the school and college levels. Although our assessments are intended to determine whether your child is struggling with a disability and whether there is an educational need for services, at the primary and secondary school levels, a team consisting of school staff and a parent decide whether a student is eligible for special education services. With regard to Section 504, schools and colleges are ultimately responsible for deciding whether a student is eligible for services. At PEDS, we cannot guarantee that a school district, college, or national testing board will accept our findings and recommendations; however, we have been very successful with schools, colleges and national testing boards accepting our results, given the reputation of our agency and our expertise regarding how to conduct assessments that meet criteria.

Our evidence-based, comprehensive autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessments include a combination of gold-standard measures for assessing symptoms of autism (i.e., the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2), the Autism Diagnostic Interview, Revised (ADIR), the Gilliam Autism Rating Scale-2 (GARS-2), and include an assessment of cognitive ability, social competence and social perception, language level, and adaptive behavior. Our ASD assessments also make use of various behavioral checklists as well as information obtained from collateral interviews with parents and other professionals in your child’s life. Our autism spectrum disorder (ASD) assessments can help to determine strengths and weaknesses that are specific to your child, recommend interventions that are appropriate to help compensate for your child’s difficulties, identify other problems (i.e., ADD/ADHD, learning disabilities, anxiety, depression, oppositional defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder) that may be contributing to your child’s symptoms, help your child access appropriate school services through special education or Section 504. Following the assessment, the professional will meet with parents to discuss diagnosis, referrals and recommendations.